Analysis of gene expression in populations of adult undifferentiated spermatogonia [microarray]. Mus musculus

The undifferentiated spermatogonial population of mouse testis is known to be functionally heterogeneous and contain both stem cells and committed progenitor cells. However, gene expression patterns marking these distinct cell fractions are poorly defined. We found that a subset of undifferentiated spermatogonia were marked by expression of an Oct4-GFP transgene but properties of these cells were unclear. Undifferentiated cells were therefore isolated from adult testes and seperated according to expression of Oct4-GFP for gene expression analysis by microarray. Our goal was to correlate Oct4-GFP expression with that of known markers of stem and committed progenitor cells to determine which undifferentiated cell populations were marked by Oct4-GFP. Overall design: 3 independent sets of Oct4-GFP-positive and Oct4-GFP-negative undifferentiated spermatogonia were isolated by flow sorting from adult mouse testes. To obtain sufficient cells for analysis, testis cells from 2-3 mice were pooled for each sample.